Giants Fire Defensive Coordinator Perry Fewell

Giants’ Defense Ranked 29th in Yards Allowed During Regular Season

The Giants won’t be bringing their coaching staff back intact next season, after all.

Defensive coordinator
Perry Fewell,
who helped guide the Giants to a Super Bowl XLVI title, and longtime cornerbacks coach
Peter Giunta
were let go on Wednesday afternoon, the team said. As recently as Monday, it appeared as though the Giants would be retaining the majority of their coaching staff, including Fewell, a team source had said.

The Giants’ (6-10) defense ranked 29th in yards allowed during the regular season, but many, including owner John Mara and coach Tom Coughlin, acknowledged that injuries played a significant role. Four defensive starters and two significant defensive specialists finished the season on injured reserve.

So news of the firings came as a shock to many, including Giants safety Antrel Rolle, who told Sirius XM radio that he and Fewell had a close relationship.

“I just found out seconds ago,” said Rolle, who will become an unrestricted free agent after the season. “I’m shocked, to be honest with you. I really don’t know what to say. We didn’t have the best of the best years as a defense but I think it definitely had more to do [with factors other than] Coach Fewell.

“I figured he would be back given that we had so many people on IR,” Rolle continued, adding that bringing Fewell back would have offered him “the chance to make the wrong right.”

Even Coughlin seemed particularly torn over his decision.

“No one person is responsible for what happened in this year,” Coughlin said Wednesday. “That has to be loud and clear. If there is any one person responsible, it is me. It is not Perry Fewell. It is not Peter Giunta. Both of them are outstanding football coaches in their own way. The simple fact of the matter is in the circumstance that we find ourselves, change is necessary. That may not be the most eloquent way of saying it, but that is what I am confronted with.”

Fewell, who previously worked for Coughlin in Jacksonville, was hired by the Giants to replace
Bill Sheridan
in 2010. That year, the Giants improved from 13th in yards allowed to seventh.

‘The simple fact of the matter is, in the circumstance that we find ourselves, change is necessary. That may not be the most eloquent way of saying it, but that is what I am confronted with.’

—Tom Coughlin

Fewell may have been at his best during the 2011 regular season, even though his defense ranked 27th in the NFL. As injuries depleted the depth chart at both linebacker and defensive back, he began using a three-safety formation that used veteran safety Deon Grant in a hybrid safety-linebacker role. In what turned out to be his 12th and final season, Grant finished with a remarkable 64 tackles and an interception.

The Giants won seven of their final eight games that season, including the postseason, and finished the regular season tied for fourth with 48 sacks.

Giunta joined the Giants in 2006 and previously served as the defensive coordinator for the Super Bowl XXXIV-winning St. Louis Rams.

Longtime Giants offensive coordinator
Kevin Gilbride
retired after a dismal 2013 season, and that unit improved this season under first-year coordinator
Ben McAdoo
and his West Coast scheme. The Giants’ offense ranked 10th in 2014 after finishing 28th in 2013, with quarterback
Eli Manning
reducing his interception from a career-high 27 in 2013 to 14 picks this season.

Now Coughlin is hoping that a new coordinator will galvanize the Giants defense the way McAdoo did for the offense.

“The decision here gives us the ability to revive our defensive people, to introduce, if you will, a new, different system, perhaps not that big a change, but nevertheless there will be some change involved,” Coughlin said.

The Giants are also looking for a new quarterbacks coach after
Danny Langsdorf
took the offensive-coordinator position with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.